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  The birds panicked and shrieked as Kasandria rattled cages, pounded stumps, and threatened to barbeque, fry, and roast every last one.

  Moa was shaking so hard some of his feathers fell out, but he found the courage to speak up. “It wasn’t Queen Patchouli.”

  The fairy turned, stomped toward the terrified bird, and hovered over him. “Who else wants me to pay more than I already have for trying to be the best fairy flier in Aventurine?”

  Why is that a crime? I wondered.

  Moa asked, “Is that wrong?”

  “It is if you cast a grounding spell on the mushroom stew so your clan sisters can’t fly.” Kasandria’s eyes narrowed. “Queen Patchouli stripped me of my fairy powers and banished me. If she didn’t create you to mock me, who did?”

  “I dared to suggest that cloud people and fairies could be friends,” Moa said. “As punishment, King Shyne turned me into a bird with no wings and ordered his guards to drop me here.”

  “To ridicule me!” Kasandria shook her cane at the big bird. “If I had the power, I’d turn you into a dragon and send you back to evaporate all those high-and-mighty mist people with your fiery breath. Since I can’t do that, I’ll kill you instead—as soon as I find my knife.”

  “No, please!” Moa backed to the length of his chain.

  Several of the other birds gasped. I waited and watched as Kasandria began a frantic search for her misplaced blade. She looked under cages and dumped seed out of food dishes. She even checked in tangles of dead vines and inside hollow gnarls. Kasandria tore through the clearing like a tornado, smashing anything that got in her way.

  Birds crawled out of broken cages and hid. Some hungrily pecked at the spilled seed on the ground. Those who were chained jumped and dodged to avoid Kasandria’s thrashing cane. Her destructive tantrum ended as quickly as it began when the fairy decided that her knife wasn’t in the clearing.

  “It must be in my house,” Kasandria muttered as she headed back into the mist.

  I crept out of hiding and started to follow. I knew that I couldn’t let her find her knife and kill the moa. But I didn’t have any kind of weapon to stop her.

  I pulled my still-damp hair back behind my ears to see better, and my hand brushed the feather that Queen Patchouli had given me. Maybe it was a weapon. I carefully unwound the feather from my hair.

  Disappointment sat like a stone in my gut. The feather’s end wasn’t sharp; it was rounded and had nubs along the edge. In fact, it looked a lot like a key.

  “It will be quite useful under certain circumstances,” Queen Patchouli had said.

  With the feather clutched in one hand, I darted to the nearest cage. The vulture inside started to speak.

  I put my finger to my lips and shook my head. “Don’t make a sound until I give the signal,” I whispered. “I want to free everyone before Kasandria returns.”

  The bird nodded and watched as I slipped the quill into the lock. The feather quivered in my hand. Then the lock clicked and opened. I removed it and moved on to the cage with the red and black bird Kasandria had terrorized. The feather morphed into a perfect key to fit that lock, too.

  “Are you strong enough to fly?” I asked softly. When the bird nodded, I told it to wait for my signal.

  I quickly unlocked all the cages and then moved on to the chained birds. I freed the moa first.

  “Who are you?” the big bird asked.

  “Shhh!” I took the shackle off and clamped my hand around the bird’s beak. “Be quiet until I tell you to fly,” I whispered.

  “Uh can’t fuh,” the bird mumbled through its closed beak.

  “Then run for the trunk,” I said.

  He nodded and fluffed his feathers. “Uh can wun wally fas.”

  “Shhh!” I shook my head as I moved on to the little white chicken.

  The chicken squatted to wait and didn’t make a peep. The other birds, including the moa, were so still the clearing seemed eerily quiet. They didn’t move until Kasandria came shuffling out of the mist, walking with her cane and waving a knife.

  “Nobody makes a fool out of me,” the fairy said.

  “Fly now!” I shouted.

  The stronger birds rose into the air and flew straight at the startled fairy. The moa, the white chicken, and several others ran toward her on foot. All of them screeched and squawked as they attacked.

  “How did you get loose?” Kasandria swung her knife and cane as several hunting birds dove to rake her with their talons. “Get away! Shoo!”

  I had freed the birds so they could escape. But it seemed they wanted Kasandria to pay for mistreating them first.

  The moa and the grounded birds charged. As Kasandria backed away, other birds bombed her with twigs and nuts. The hunters continued their assault, driving the horrid fairy into the mist and past a ramshackle house.

  Kasandria gave up trying to fight off the attack and tried to find cover under vines and behind ferns. The birds easily tore away the plants and forced her to keep moving. I followed the trail through crushed vines and broken branches until the moa and the other grounded birds stopped. When I came out of the mist, I saw that the birds had driven their tormentor to the edge of the branch.

  “Go away, you stupid birds! I’ll get you for this!” Kasandria tried to beat the attackers back, but they kept diving and pushing. She hooked her cane on an overhead branch and held on with both hands.

  I ran forward, hoping to save the fairy, but I was too late. She stumbled and the birds made no move to help her. Her hands slipped from her cane, and she fell.

  The fairy shrieked as she plummeted out of sight to her death.

  The moa stepped up beside me. “She was very bad.”

  “Yes, she was,” I agreed. Revenge was never the right solution, but somehow it was hard to blame the birds. They were free, but if Kasandria had lived, she would have captured and mistreated others.

  As I walked back to the clearing, most of the birds flew away. The grounded birds decided to make the branch their own. With Kasandria gone, there was nothing to fear. They began by tearing down her house.

  I headed back to the main trunk.

  “Is that a flower?” the moa asked.

  I didn’t realize the big bird was following me until he spoke. I glanced at the vines overhead and smiled. Several flowers had bloomed, and new green growth was visible under the dead leaves. Moss appeared on the stumps and berry bushes sprouted through the ground bark. Free of the fairy’s evil influence, the whole branch was coming back to life. The birds that chose to stay would not go hungry or want for fresh nesting materials.

  “You’ll have a nice home here … um … what’s your name?” I asked.

  “You can call me Moa. And what should I call you?”

  “My name’s Trinity.”

  “Brave Trinity, I owe you my life. I cannot stay here now. I have a debt to repay you. Until I save your life, I will be your companion,” Moa said with a bow.

  I stopped, and Moa plowed into me.

  “Watch it,” the bird said.

  My temper flared. “You bumped into me!”

  “You were in the way,” Moa huffed.

  “You can’t come with me,” I said. The last thing I needed on a quest to rescue a baby queen from hostile cloud people was an outcast mist person who was stuck in the body of a bird that couldn’t fly.

  “Yes, I can. I must,” the bird insisted. “Cloud people never forsake a life-for-a-life obligation.”

  “I won’t tell,” I said.

  “I’m staying,” Moa countered.

  “Okay, suit yourself.” I was certain that the stubborn bird would change his mind. He couldn’t fly, and he wasn’t equipped to climb. Everything Moa needed to survive was on the branch. I wouldn’t feel the least bit guilty leaving him behind.

  “I can give you valuable information. Like, nothing hurts mist people,” Moa said, “except maybe dragon fire. Any kind of intense heat, actually. If we explosively evaporate, like in an instant, o
ur molecules don’t always condense again. Then we’re dead.”

  I took mental notes, but I didn’t let him know I was paying attention.

  “A lot of stuff hurts solid bodies,” Moa said. “I guess that’s why King Shyne chose this form to punish me. As a solid, I can’t float on the wind or compress and compete in icicle tournaments or disperse so a wicked fairy’s cane passes right through me.”

  “If the Cantigo Uplands are made of clouds, did you just fall through?” I asked, so I would know what to expect when I got there.

  “No, the clouds adjust to support whatever weight is present,” Moa explained. “I was lucky King Shyne and Queen Sonja didn’t have me thrown off the Long-Way-Down Peninsula. Instead, they deliberately had me heaved onto Kasandria’s branch.”

  “Did they want to make her mad?” I asked.

  “No, they wanted me to see how terrible fairies are,” Moa said.

  “Kasandria was terrible,” I explained, “but most fairies are go—Hnk!” I was jerked to a halt by a strong pull on my harness. I snapped my head around.

  Moa’s beak was clamped onto my harness straps. He spit them out.

  “What was that for?” I asked.

  “You almost stepped on that stinkbug,” Moa said. “Bad for him if he dies. Bad for you if he sprays his stink. It’s hard to hide if you smell really bad.”

  I looked down and saw a line of beetles walking across our path.

  “Um, thanks. So, mist people can smell things?” I asked.

  “Yes, we are beings of the air and very sensitive to scents,” Moa said.

  I added that information to my Cloud People Fact File.

  When we reached the tree trunk, I didn’t stop to say good-bye. I started climbing. When I was twenty feet higher, I paused to look back.

  Moa wasn’t stranded. He was ten feet behind me, scaling the tree using his beak and talons.

  “Don’t worry about me!” Moa gripped a branch and the trunk bark with his talons and shouted, “I’ll catch up!”

  I couldn’t make Moa go away, so I ignored him. That wasn’t hard to do. He couldn’t talk while he was using his beak to climb, and I had to concentrate on my foot- and handholds as we got closer to the top of the gigantic pine. The branches here were much thinner, and the narrowing trunk swayed in the wind.

  Eventually, I paused in the crook of a sturdy branch. The tip-top of the tree was less than thirty feet away, and it wasn’t safe to climb higher on the flimsy branches.

  From this vantage point, I had a great view of the other trees in the Cloud Pine Forest. The giant pines stretched as far as I could see in three directions, and they were laced with clouds.

  “That’s where I come from.” Moa gripped the tree with his talons and nodded to the left.

  The cloud territory called the Cantigo Uplands hovered just off the side of the tree, forty or fifty feet up. The only way to reach it was by kite.

  “You have to stay here, Moa,” I said.

  “I’d rather go back down with you,” the bird said.

  “I’m going to the Cantigo Uplands.”

  The bird blinked. “No.”

  “I’m on a mission for Queen Patchouli,” I said. “I have to rescue a fairy baby that’s being born there.”

  “No,” Moa insisted. “I have an obligation to keep you from harm. King Shyne has never dealt with an intruder, but King Whone before him turned an outsider into snowflakes and scattered him across the land. You can’t go.”

  “I have to,” I said. “It’s a fairy-godmother-in-training obligation I can’t refuse.”

  “Then I’m going with you.” Moa grabbed my harness with a talon and then glanced at the cloud country. “Except I can’t fly, so we can’t get there anyway.”

  “I can fly—sort of.” I just didn’t know if my kite could carry Moa’s extra weight. I pulled out my pendant and opened the compass. “Wind speed and kite lift for two?”

  Moa peered over my shoulder as a fog covered the mechanism and cleared. The transparent picture showed a kite soaring upward. The girl figure was holding on to the kite and the bird was riding piggyback.

  Moa gasped. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I’m supposed to protect you. Not let you fly into danger.”

  “I’m going with or without you,” I said. “But I’ve got an idea to make it a little safer. Let go so I can work.”

  “Promise you won’t leave me,” the bird said.

  “I won’t leave you.”

  Moa nodded and moved to the branch below. I peeled off a long piece of the silky top layer of bark and fashioned it into a sling. Then I untied my kite and slipped the sling around my chest and one shoulder.

  I called Moa back up to the branch. He understood the sling idea immediately and crawled into it so that he was pressed against my back. I made sure he held on to the harness with his talons. Then I positioned myself for takeoff.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “We will fly or die together. It will be an honor,” Moa said as he tightened his grip.

  I took a deep breath and set my sights on the cloud domain. Aotearoa, the Maori name for New Zealand, means “long white cloud.” Maybe that’s a good omen, I thought as I launched us into the air.

  I knew immediately that it would be difficult to steer. The high altitude meant sudden updrafts, down-drafts, and crosswinds. Not to mention that Moa was clinging stubbornly to me. I struggled to keep the kite level and on course.

  “I feel sick,” Moa moaned.

  “Are you going to throw up?” I asked.

  “No!” the bird huffed, insulted.

  “Good!” I shot back.

  The kite dipped steeply to one side, and Moa’s talons dug into my back.

  “Ouch!” I winced. “Don’t do that!”

  Moa sneezed.

  Startled, I jerked and lost control.

  “We’re falling!” the bird cried out.

  I angled the kite into a controlled dive, banked, and got us heading upward again. Shaken, I focused on flying and our destination.

  The mishap must have unnerved Moa, too. He didn’t make another sound until we approached the cloud realm and I asked a question.

  “Will someone see us coming?” I wanted to get in and out of the Cantigo Uplands without the cloud people knowing I had been there, just as I promised Jango and Targa.

  “Only if someone is looking this way,” Moa said.

  “Do cloud people hang out on the edges?” I asked.

  “Only those who think they can fall like rain and survive.” Moa sighed. “A few have tried, but no one has ever returned.”

  I put that in my Cloud People Fact File, too. I could escape over the edge with my kite, and they would not pursue.

  “Where’s the best place to land?” I asked.

  Moa turned his head toward the cloud. “There’s one.”

  I looked at the wide indentation in the coastline as we sailed past. I didn’t want to turn around. Flying with the wind was hard enough without trying to fly against it.

  “I need more warning!” I yelled.

  “Okay.” Moa paused a second. “There’s one. There’s another one. That looks like a good spot.”

  “Does that mean I can land anywhere?” I asked.

  “Almost anywhere,” Moa said. “You don’t want to land near a spoonga cave. They devour mist creatures.” He made a slurping sound to demonstrate.

  “We’re not mist creatures,” I said as I added another fact to my file. So far, I knew three things that harmed mist people: heat, falling like rain from the cloud domain, and being eaten by spoongas.

  “Oh, right!” Moa bobbed his head and made a rumbling sound in his throat. He was laughing. “Then you can land anywhere except places where mist people go.”

  Moa’s information was vague and not very helpful. I gave up asking for advice and scanned the cloud coast myself. When I saw another wide notch, I banked and headed in.

  “Hang on,” I told Moa as we entered the Cantig
o Uplands. According to him, the cloud would adjust to support weight. When I touched down, my feet sank into the soft terrain, but I didn’t have time to panic. They rose back up when the ground solidified underneath me.

  Moa slid off my back and breathed in deeply. “It’s good to be home, but I hope nobody sees me.”

  “Would they arrest you or something?” I adjusted my hat, stuffed the sling into my pack, and attached the kite to my harness.

  “No, I’ve already been punished for believing that cloud people aren’t superior to everyone else in Aventurine,” Moa said. “Having the wits to escape the bird fairy and coming back isn’t a crime, but I’m still solid, so I’m still an outcast.”

  “Unless the king decides to change you back,” I said.

  Moa gave me a long, beady-eyed stare. “I suppose that could happen—when he decides to be friends with fairies.”

  So you’re stuck being solid, and I’m stuck with you, I thought as I glanced around to get my bearings. The cloudscape wasn’t all white or gray as I expected but softly colored in pastels. It wasn’t fluffy, either. We had landed among pointed pillars and craters made of hard foam.

  “Where’s the baby?” Moa asked.

  “Huh?” I stared at him. Queen Patchouli hadn’t told me where the new queen would be born. I assumed I would just find her somehow, like so many other inexplicable things that happened in Aventurine. “I don’t know.”

  Moa blinked and stared back. “Trinity, I don’t want to upset you, but what kind of plan is that?”

  He was right. “It’s not my plan,” I said. “It’s more like Queen Patchouli’s plan.”

  “Why would the wise and wonderful Queen Patchouli send you to get something you can’t find?” Moa asked.

  “She wouldn’t.” I frowned, remembering something else Queen Patchouli had told me.

  “Everything you need to bring the baby back to the Willowood … will be available.”

  I had something that would locate the infant queen, but what? I ran down the list of my possessions: water pod—no; sweet potato—no; unbreakable string—no; harness and pack—no; kite—maybe; clothes—no; necklace—